Making small changes for diversity + social media updates

Oh wow. It feels like I’ve finally recovered from Expo brain – thanks to all of you who said hi to me in person at Re:co & Expo! Some highlights from Re:co are in tweet-form below. Recently announced, I’ve joined Sprudge’s first Editorial Advisory Board.

This issue is packed with info from Re:co and a bunch of social media network changes! Enjoy.

This isn’t going to be a how-to guide on diversity efforts. It’s more of a reflection on what you can do as a business (or a person).

On the two panels I participated in at Re:co, I tried to emphasize recognizing your own power and your business’ power. Harnessing that power and making it work for good is likely a better approach to drastically changing up your business.

Visual Representation

Let me explain. You’re in charge of marketing and content for your company. You hire models or put together ads. If you want to be more cognizant of diversity, your first step would be taking a look at the models you hire. You don’t need to be a top-level executive to make this change.

Forty-three percent of the US millennial generation is racially non-white. And 75% of black millennials “say they’re more likely to consider a brand that positively reflects black culture.”

All of this is not to say that you should insert a black person into your next ad. Instead, take a look at where you can make a change. If your three cafe employees are all white men, it doesn’t make sense to have a racially diverse barista photo set. In fact, this misrepresentation would certainly backfire. Also, if that is the case for your cafe, you have a hiring issue.

Race is also not the only diversity indicator. And adding a single person for their color is certainly the wrong approach, too. Reflect on this.

I also talk about voice & personality and community. Click below to continue reading.

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Re:co Highlights

“if you’ve created a work environment where people simply say yes to you, you’re probably not creating the right environment.” -@Tymika_Nichelle #recosymposium2018

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Facebook is hosting their annual F8 conference right now (started yesterday), so new features are aplenty. There have been privacy data changes, some due to GDPR, others due to their privacy fiasco. If you use a 3rd party app to manage your social media, it’s possible you might not see certain data anymore.

Instagram: Some of these features are still rolling out. You can repost other posts or other stories to your own Stories. They also opened their API up to other apps, which means you can now share that song from Spotify to your Stories (watch out, I’ve got a brewing playlist!). There is also a group video chat that will be available soon- different from a Live.

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